This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Editor's Note • Robert Kirby is busy deciding which bowling balls to pack for his Disney cruise. This is a reprint of an earlier column.
Employees at Smith's in Herriman busted me for shoplifting last week. I was sneaking some purloined loin out the front door when the calloused hands of justice descended upon me.
It was awful. I was acting overtly casual, as any thief would. Midway through the sliding doors, the shoplifting detector went off like a crash alarm on a tuna boat. Employees started hurrying toward me.
Running away was my first instinct. Such behavior served me well in my youth, but headlong flight from authority is not something lazy old men are good at. Also, my wife grabbed onto me and held me for security.
The offending item and a receipt were quickly discovered, and my innocence was more or less established. A package of T-bone steaks was hustled over to a deactivator.
The bonging noise stopped and I was released on my own recognizance. Nobody beat me, strip-searched me or even bothered to check my ID. In fact, they apologized for the inconvenience and thanked me for my patience.
Rats. A slap or even a cursory peek down my pants would have given me the bona fides for a lawsuit. I could have been out of your hair for good, living the feckless life of a rich coot in St. George.
More troubling is the fact that my dinner was bugged. I went straight home and carefully took it apart in the garage. Cleverly hidden under the price tag was a tiny electronic device.
The bug was a metallic strip approximately the size of a small Band-Aid. There didn't appear to be a miniature camera installed in it, but just to be sure, I hit it with a hammer. I hope it gave someone at the CIA a headache.
Printed on it were the words every American consumer dreads right after "Do Not Eat" and "For External Use Only." In bold letters was: "Remove Before Microwaving."
Since the bug was hidden, how was I supposed to know this before I tried to defrost the steaks? I could have been nearly killed, like the time my wife discovered that I accidentally microwaved two shotgun shells.
I thought the Cold War was over. When did we start bugging meat? Cameras, radios, CDs, leather apparel — all of this high-end stuff is either chained, bugged or otherwise made easier to monitor. But meat?
A closer look at the price tag revealed the reason. Steak costs far more per pound than Osama bin Laden. A family pack of hamburger is felony theft. At this rate, it won't be long before bugs are installed in veggie burgers.
Aren't we bugging the wrong stuff? Instead of keeping track of stuff people like to steal, why not keep track of the people who steal it? Some people ought to set off alarms just by walking into a store.
For example, how come Larry Erdmann doesn't have one of these metallic strips nailed to his forehead? I once loaned him a library book that he didn't take back for a year.
My guess is that it would not only be unconstitutional to bug people, but also inconvenient. There probably aren't enough places on them to hide all the bugs some people would need to make them trustworthy.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley